Two weeks now playing catch up. Fire-fighting: hours at the weed-face, hoe in hand. Some speed is of the essence. I rip out the tired tear peas, a bit too pallid now and exhausted, like me. I pick through for dried pods to save seed. I leave the two hazel structures. I am still craving the height. Not ready yet to pack the summer wigwams away. I have hopes for hand-high morning glory.
Visits are twice a day, early and late, most days. Hoeing, weeding, feeding, no longer standing totally straight. A penance of sorts, paying in the hours I owe. The plot is a stern taskmaster. I wish for an osteopath.
Bare patches open up where potatoes and summer salads were. Sprawling calendula comes out, some nasturtium, too. There is a slight air of ruthlessness.
I tie up coriander until it has finished setting seed. We transplant a sprawling courgette plant to Howard’s other spot. It is getting too greedy for space.
I weed and re-weed every few days, I need light breaking in and movement in air. I sense a stirring of autumn in my early mornings.
Near soon enough there is a transformation. I sow a new four-row bed the same length as me. A row of Italian rosa chicory mixed with red and white striped treviso. I sow hardy late-summer salads next to “oriental” autumn leaves. Last, a middle row of maybe too-late-sown calendula, a constant here, of course. At home the seed bowls are starting to fill. Pea pods are laid out, drying, they will be later joined by beans if things continue to recover.
We spray the last of the steeped nettle “tea”, late into the evening. It smells truly terrible. It makes our stomachs turn. I restock the barrel with comfrey. The two banks of tagetes are bushy, happy and scarlet-faced, beloved by hordes of fluttering butterflies, bees and me.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
